But the pulling of them apart and pushing them together again was only a sleight-of-hand trick.

I tried vainly to put them together.

We wouldn't want them to think we were doing anything immoral.

The sudden rush into space confused them so that they could not think.

Ed merely looked at them and then back at Carmen.

After that, whenever the children were hungry, they cried out, "Becos! becos! becos!" till the shepherd gave them something to eat.

The little man felt carefully in his pocket and pulled out the tiny piglets, setting them upon the grass one by one, where they ran around and nibbled the tender blades.

He bent over, picked up her clothes and tossed them to her.

Why had he hidden them - and why had he decided to reveal them?

The worst thing was their terror of reaching the bottom of this great crack in the earth, and the natural fear that sudden death was about to overtake them at any moment.

The shepherd and his dog could not keep them together.

Is it because winning the award gives them more confidence?

I did not eat them; but I loved their fragrance and enjoyed hunting for them in the leaves and grass.

They put her through college and it was her intent to stay with them as long as they needed her.

For her, losing them was painful enough, but losing a mate - that would be agonizing.

Each of them hugged him and talked briefly to Destiny.

The idea of making love in a strange bedroom was disturbing enough, but with only a door between them and the children, locked or not, it didn't feel right.

Dragging it up again wouldn't do either of them any good.

Dorothy and Zeb jumped out of the buggy and ran after them, but the Sorcerer remained calmly in his throne.

He led them within another but smaller circle of hedge, where grew one large and beautiful bush.

"Pull!" cried Dorothy, and as they did so the royal lady leaned toward them and the stems snapped and separated from her feet.

"May I eat one of them?" asked the kitten, in a pleading voice.

In the First World War, we learned to treat wounds by washing them with a germicide.

The aunt spoke to each of them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today."

He looked through them and then handed them back without comment.

Jonathan was watching them intently.

"If it had any bones, I ate them," replied the kitten, composedly, as it washed its face after the meal.

It often left them partially paralyzed, in wheelchairs or iron lungs (a term that's now all but forgotten and will likely send younger readers to Wikipedia).

Words and images came tripping to my finger ends, and as I thought out sentence after sentence, I wrote them on my braille slate.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the larger circle.

Alex had been the one who helped her see them as true family, and yet he was having issues accepting his own father.

If you want something different, why don't you trade them in on something else?

Ultimately it had cost them a child and her ability to have more.

These spires were like great spear-points, and if they tumbled upon one of them they were likely to suffer serious injury.

His clothing fitted his form snugly and was gorgeously colored in brilliant shades of green, which varied as the sunbeams touched them but was not wholly influenced by the solar rays.

So he followed the Prince into the great domed hall, and Dorothy and Zeb came after them, while the throng of people trooped in also.

But it took a good many years for them to grow as large and fine as they are now.

The shepherd soon lost sight of them in the darkness.

Schell regards sensors largely in terms of gameplay—but for our purposes, think of them passively logging your life.

Who made them serfs of the soil?

She fed them and gathered the few eggs they had laid after she gathered them yesterday.

Instead, Felipa met them at the corral.

Carmen couldn't make out more than a few words, but one of them was mare.

Jonathan was watching them, his mouth hanging open.

The top of the buggy caught the air like a parachute or an umbrella filled with wind, and held them back so that they floated downward with a gentle motion that was not so very disagreeable to bear.

Crash after crash echoed far above their heads, as the earth came together where it had split, and stones and chunks of clay rattled around them on every side.

"Those were the first words I ever said," called out the horse, who had overheard them, "and I can't explain why I happened to speak then.

The roof beside them had a great hole smashed through it, and pieces of glass were lying scattered in every direction.

Then, remembering the stones that had fallen with them and passed them long before they had reached this place, he answered:

"Can't you mend them?" she enquired.

In the center of each plant grew a daintily dressed Mangaboo, for the clothing of all these creatures grew upon them and was attached to their bodies.

Eureka stuck up her nose at such food, but the tiny piglets squealed delightedly at the sight of the crackers and ate them up in a jiffy.

It is because there is no warm blood in them, remarked the Wizard.

Just then they heard the big voice of Jim the cab-horse calling to them, and going to the doorway leading to the dome they found the Princess and a throng of her people had entered the House of the Sorcerer.

A fire was kindled at the bottom of a deep hole in the ground, big sticks were laid crosswise at the top, and meat was hung from them and turned on spits.

We also went nutting, and I helped them open the chestnut burrs and break the shells of hickory-nuts and walnuts--the big, sweet walnuts!

Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to.

It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon.

Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet--if a hero ever has a valet--bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do.

But those tears were pleasant to them both.

Carmen brushed them away and returned to her prayer.

Maybe this vacation would give them some much needed time together.

The sparkle faded from his eyes, leaving them soft sweet chocolate pools.

Felipa didn't seem to notice anything unusual in his attitude, so maybe he had always treated them that way.

The smile came slowly, warming his eyes - touching them with humor.

"Not for them." he said, and turned to the bathroom.

The man sitting at the other end of the table was introduced to them as Morino el capataz - their foreman, Morino.

From behind them, Felipa's amused voice teased.

Removing his hands from the wall, he placed them on her shoulders, pulling her closer.

Felipa met them in the main room downstairs.

For the next two hours, the women talked delightfully about meaningless things that kept them laughing.

Felipa guided them to Alex and Jonathan.

Felipa left them to their family outing and returned to the house.

Alex obliged and then the four of them continued to a lot where some horses grazed.

"It's over here," Jonathan said, leading them toward a large shed.

On the way back to the house, Alex offered to take them to the gulf for a family outing.

These they could not see, but they could feel them pelting the buggy top, and Jim screamed almost like a human being when a stone overtook him and struck his boney body.

Yes; there was land below them; and not so very far away, either.

As the horse ambled along, drawing the buggy, the people of the glass city made way for them and formed a procession in their rear.

With this he caught up two of the piglets and pushed them together, so that the two were one.

"No one built them," answered the man with the star.

There were no stairs in their houses, because they did not need them, but on a level surface they generally walked just as we do.

A sailor brought them to Los Angeles and I gave him nine tickets to the circus for them.

The advisors of the Princess did not like this test; but she commanded them to step into the flame and one by one they did so, and were scorched so badly that the air was soon filled with an odor like that of baked potatoes.

Slowly but steadily the heartless Mangaboos drove them on, until they had passed through the city and the gardens and come to the broad plains leading to the mountain.

A dozen of them smashed together and tumbled to the ground, and seeing his success Jim kicked again and again, charging into the vegetable crowd, knocking them in all directions and sending the others scattering to escape his iron heels.

But never mind; be brave, my friends, and I will go and tell our masters where you are, and get them to come to your rescue.

The Mangaboos saw her escape, and several of them caught up their thorns and gave chase, mounting through the air after her.

So she ran along over their heads until she had left them far behind and below and had come to the city and the House of the Sorcerer.

Noticing that the light was growing dim he picked up his nine piglets, patted each one lovingly on its fat little head, and placed them carefully in his inside pocket.

The cavern did not come to an end, as they had expected it would, but slanted upward through the great glass mountain, running in a direction that promised to lead them to the side opposite the Mangaboo country.

The sides of the tunnel showed before them like the inside of a long spy-glass, and the floor became more level.

It was all laid out into lovely lawns and gardens, with pebble paths leading through them and groves of beautiful and stately trees dotting the landscape here and there.

None of them were in clusters, such as villages or towns, but each had ample grounds of its own, with orchards and gardens surrounding it.

But I didn't see them go; did you?

"We'll eat all we can find of them," said another.

"But WE mus'n't eat them," the Wizard warned the children, "or we too may become invisible, and lose each other.

Yes; for they eat of the dama-fruit, as we all do, and that keeps them from being seen by any eye, whether human or animal.

In front of each place was a plate bearing one of the delicious dama-fruit, and the perfume that rose from these was so enticing and sweet that they were sorely tempted to eat of them and become invisible.

But the fishes that swim in our brooks we can see, and often we catch them to eat.

The children were inclined to be frightened by the sight of the small animal, which reminded them of the bears; but Dorothy reassured them by explaining that Eureka was a pet and could do no harm even if she wished to.

Our greatest Champion, Overman-Anu, once climbed the spiral stairway and fought nine days with the Gargoyles before he could escape them and come back; but he could never be induced to describe the dreadful creatures, and soon afterward a bear caught him and ate him up.

They now bade farewell to the kind but unseen people of the cottage, and after the man had called their attention to a high, pyramid-shaped mountain on the opposite side of the Valley, and told them how to travel in order to reach it, they again started upon their journey.

As the little Wizard turned to follow them he felt a hot breath against his cheek and heard a low, fierce growl.

Zeb hitched Jim to the buggy again, and the horse trotted along and drew them rapidly over the smooth water.

Dorothy nearly went with them, but she was holding fast to the iron rail of the seat, and that saved her.

The mountain before them was shaped like a cone and was so tall that its point was lost in the clouds.

But this enabled them to proceed steadily until they came to a landing where there was a rift in the side of the mountain that let in both light and air.

Looking through this opening they could see the Valley of Voe lying far below them, the cottages seeming like toy houses from that distance.

Below them was a vast space, at the bottom of which was a black sea with rolling billows, through which little tongues of flame constantly shot up.

Just above them, and almost on a level with their platform, were banks of rolling clouds which constantly shifted position and changed color.

They had fierce eyes and sharp talons and beaks, and the children hoped none of them would venture into the cavern.

"You may need them, some time," he said, "and there is really no use in my manufacturing these things unless somebody uses them."

You'd never miss ONE of them, I'm sure!

"In that case," she said, "I'll leave them alone.

But Jim was ready for them, and when he saw them coming he turned his heels toward them and began kicking out as hard as he could.

But the noise and clatter seemed as dreadful to them as Jim's heels, for all who were able swiftly turned and flew away to a great distance.

"Those wooden things are impossible to hurt," he said, "and all the damage Jim has done to them is to knock a few splinters from their noses and ears.

"What made them fly away?" asked Dorothy.

Don't you remember how the Champion escaped them by shouting his battle-cry?

Some of the wooden beings fell flat upon the ground, where they quivered and trembled in every limb; but most of them managed to wheel and escape again to a distance.

Then a few of them advanced until another shot from the Wizard's revolver made them retreat.

The wooden things wound their long arms around Zeb and the Wizard and held them fast.

The Gargoyles roughly pushed them into the opening, where there was a platform, and then flew away and left them.

The space underneath the roof, where they stood, permitted them to see on all sides of the tall building, and they looked with much curiosity at the city spread out beneath them.

From their platform a stair descended into the house, and the children and the Wizard explored it after lighting a lantern to show them the way.

Looking out, they could see into some of the houses near them, where there were open windows in abundance, and were able to mark the forms of the wooden Gargoyles moving about in their dwellings.

"That," said Zeb, "explains why this house is used by them for a prison.

"Could we fly with them?" asked Dorothy.

These preparations had not consumed a great deal of time, but the sleeping Gargoyles were beginning to wake up and move around, and soon some of them would be hunting for their missing wings.

"Flop them all together," suggested the Wizard.

"Some of them are crooked," objected the horse.

All the way to the great rock the wooden people followed them, and when Jim finally alighted at the mouth of the cavern the pursuers were still some distance away.

Then he poured over them all the kerosene oil that was left in his oil-can, and lighting a match set fire to the pile.

Inside the archway were several doors, leading to different rooms built into the mountain, and Zeb and the Wizard lifted these wooden doors from their hinges and tossed them all on the flames.

Then a sudden turn brought them to a narrow gallery where the buggy could not pass.

It carried their baggage and was useful to ride in wherever there were good roads, and since it had accompanied them so far in their travels they felt it their duty to preserve it.

"No," answered the owner of the big yellow eyes which were blinking at them so steadily; "you are wrong about that.

But at length they came unexpectedly upon a huge rock that shut off the passage and blocked them from proceeding a single step farther.

That meant that their world--the real world--was not very far away, and that the succession of perilous adventures they had encountered had at last brought them near the earth's surface, which meant home to them.

Don't forget them, for I may have to eat them, after all.

So he sat down upon the floor of the cave, brought the piglets out one by one, and allowed them to run around as much as they pleased.

The Wizard told them of the misfortune that had overtaken the wanderers.

Have you them here with you?

"No; I lost them somewhere in the air," explained the child.

One moment Dorothy sat beside them with the kitten in her lap, and a moment later the horse, the piglets, the Wizard and the boy were all that remained in the underground prison.

The little man looked at her closely and then took both the maiden's hands in his and shook them cordially.

"Yes," said the soldier; "but I shaved them off long ago, and since then I have risen from a private to be the Chief General of the Royal Armies."

I told them I was a Wizard, and showed them some easy tricks that amazed them; and when they saw the initials painted on the balloon they called me Oz.

I'm very certain, Oz, that you gave me the best brains in the world, for I can think with them day and night, when all other brains are fast asleep.

They played the National air called "The Oz Spangled Banner," and behind them were the standard bearers with the Royal flag.

When he had made them all disappear again Ozma declared she was sorry they were gone, for she wanted one of them to pet and play with.

There was enough material there to enable him to prepare several new tricks which he had learned from some of the jugglers in the circus, and he had passed part of the night in getting them ready.

Then circle 'round them and come back again.

Several days of festivity and merry-making followed, for such old friends did not often meet and there was much to be told and talked over between them, and many amusements to be enjoyed in this delightful country.

When I get my thoughts arranged in good order I do not like to have anything upset them or throw them into confusion.

Tell them it would be foolish for me to eat the piglet, because I had sense enough to know it would raise a row if I did.

"But Uncle Henry and Aunt Em need me to help them," she added, "so I can't ever be very long away from the farm in Kansas."

Just ahead of them were the gates of Hugson's Ranch, and Uncle Hugson now came out and stood with uplifted arms and wide open mouth, staring in amazement.

Then all three of them laughed heartily.

Some of them thought that "Home" was a good subject.

He held them in his hand, and showed them to the boy.

The shepherd led them gently back to the hut and gave them their usual supper of bread and milk.

They wished to be ready to defend themselves, if the soldiers should try to do them harm.

The four men followed them for some distance, and then lost them on the hillside.

"Three nails in each shoe will hold them on," said the smith.

He saw them rolling down her cheeks.

The people called them the British.

Some called them "red-coats."

It took them two days to reach Exeter.

The people whom they met gazed at them and wondered who they could be.

The pictures were painted by hand, and some of them were very beautiful.

One day when they were with their mother, she showed them a wonderful book that some rich friend had given her.

She turned the leaves and showed them the strange letters.

She showed them the beautiful pictures, and told them how they had been drawn and painted.

"I think I will give them to our friends," said Cyrus.

After the guests had drunk quite a little of it, they began to talk foolishly and sing loudly; and some of them went to sleep.

For in that country, people never wear shoes in the house, but take them off at the door.

The two boys ran for the teacher's shoes, and each claimed the honor of carrying them to him.

I hope that I shall never do anything to make them careless of their duties.

Let the son marry the daughter, if both agree, and give them the treasure as a wedding portion.

He had given them a great deal of trouble, and they wished to destroy him.

Here the rocks were smaller, and he soon loosened them enough to allow him to squeeze through.

Let it be a free gift to them from the city.

Give us a few days to learn what sort of laws you will make for us, and then we will say whether we can submit to them or not.

Then he told them what laws he would require them to obey.

But he drove them back with scornful words.

Behind them followed a long procession of the women of Rome.

Arion overheard them plotting.

He spoke of the birds as his little brothers of the air, and he could never bear to see them harmed.

Once when a boy gave him a pair of doves which he had snared, St. Francis had a nest made for them, and the mother bird laid her eggs in it.

And when he had blessed them, all began to sing; and the whole forest was filled with sweetness and joy because of their wonderful melodies.

To do this, he had to take them to a large city where there was a slave market.

A number of bundles were made up for them to carry.

He tried to make signals to them; he called as loudly as he could; but he was neither seen nor heard, and the ships came no nearer.

He took ten gold pieces from his table and wrapped them in the little letter.

Then he went out again, very quietly, and slipped them all into the boy's pocket.

"I saw two hundred of them in the village below us," said one of his officers.

"Bob Fulton planned the whole thing," he said, "and I helped him make the paddles and put them on the boat."

The caliph was so well pleased with these jewels that he bought them and paid the merchant a large sum of money.

He put the bag of money on top of them and then leaped into the water.

I pray that you will look at them and take them at your own price.

Find all the old men that live on the mountains or in the flat country around, and command them to appear before me one week from to-day.

So much the better, let them look.

The mother gave each a tin plate and a wooden spoon, and then helped them all to boiled beans.

They were all dressed very finely, and some of them carried swords.

Let them say what they please, I am not going to change my clothes.

So the governor called two of his trusted officers and told them to carry the tripod to Priene and offer it to Bias.

The people of his country had made him their king; but as soon as he had made good laws for them he gave up his crown.

The messengers found him in his house talking to his friends and teaching them wisdom.

When he heard that some men had come to Corinth with a very costly golden tripod, he had them brought before him.

"We have offered the prize to each one of them," said the messengers, "and each one has refused it."

Consider this: None of them is necessary or inevitable.

I include them to point out that history is discontinuous.

No more trying to retrace your steps to find your car keys; you can see where you left them by checking your GPS system records.

What if the capability to see connections and even to have them detected was all there for us?

And if each of those billion people in turn shared a million of their life experiences, and you recorded them, you'd have an aggregate number of life experiences so large I had to look it up online.

Likewise for mental illnesses: We should be able to cure them to the extent the person in question would wish them to be.

Then imagine them all instantly dead.

Or is it something about them that predates their Oscar triumph and helped them win?

What is it about them and their lives that made them live so long or so well?

My guess is that such people have some genetic factor protecting them against the adverse effects of bacon.

If you take low-worth items or raw materials and apply labor to them to make something that has value, you have created wealth.

That means that as you get more of them, you value each new one less.

I take things from my attic and my garage and sell them to people who value them more than I do.

For instance, I could hand carve bird calls and then advertise them only to people who are looking at online content about hand-carved bird calls or who search the Internet for information about hand-carved bird calls.

And yet pencils get made, more than a billion of them a year, and they are essentially given away.

I don't mean that in a motivational poster kind of way but in a literal sense: Failures (and what we learn from them) will help build the energy solutions for our future.

I knew typesetters who said computers would never duplicate their quality; travel agents who said the Internet would never replace them, and whose stockbrokers reassured them this was true.

Both of these have political implications, and so it is with some hesitation I bring them up.

Then, make them all soak their fingers in ice water so they are numb and work even slower, creating another thirty jobs for cold-fingered, blindfolded cotton seed removers.

All people would have tools to make them more productive.

How many people do you know who say their job stretches them to their maximum potential?

Frankly, no one wants to do them, so the only way to get people to do them is to pay them.

Depending on function, robots can come in all shapes and sizes, and I see no compelling reason to make them like humans.

What we should not try to do, in my opinion, is give them human traits.

We have fallen into the habit of anthropomorphizing computers and robots for a simple reason: The more we program them to do things that we presently do, the more we think of them as being like us.

But what if dogs didn't exist and your only experience with them was watching Scooby-Doo?

Or nanites that clean up any toxic chemicals they find and turn them into harmless agents?

Again, the materials to build the car are abundant; their cost is high because of technology deficiencies around retrieving and refining them, not an underlying rarity.

(Of course, I can't go buy a thousand cans for $2,000 and have them worth $10,000 to me.

In one understanding of economic history, the rich get ahead, and the gap between them and the poor widens.

Families who owned great houses were able to keep them if they opened them to the public, acted as guides, and only lived in a small part of them.

Cynics view this as the rich paying off the poor to keep them from revolting.

Although the poor may not believe that wealth is attainable for them, they do not want to rock the boat and risk disrupting the system that guarantees them at least some income.

They would say, If government is obligated to protect its citizens from a foreign invader, then it is obligated to protect them from a criminal.

He worked to apply a means test, pared the rolls back, then died; the rolls swelled again, and his successor again tried to bring them in line, but it was hard.

Therefore millions of people were willing to pay hundreds of dollars for the software to make them more productive.

Now, what if the bottom half of jobs disappeared and were replaced by robots who did them for almost free?

They will take advantage of the freedom from financial want that the modern age gives them and will focus on improving themselves and the world they live in.

Now they could find what really satisfies them and do that.

So yeah, if you told them to choose between working and not working, many would choose to relax.

And we got them all, more or less, by trade and the wealth generated by our work doing some function for which we are trained.

Workhouses both lodged the poor and gave them work.

Governments create entitlements due to public demand for them, and public demand exists where the need is not filled.

Whether you are for the organic food movement or against it, for genetically modified crops or against them, for corporate farms or seed banks or raw food or anything else, is influenced significantly by your larger view of politics.

In 1962, some of them were grown in India, and based on the results, Borlaug was invited to India.

All the seeds we have today have these inherent limits built into them that we still haven't figured out how to change.

We apply inefficient agricultural techniques to grow and harvest them, and then we inefficiently distribute them.

How long will it be before the driver controls them remotely from his office?

I buy my pecans from someone who picks and shells them himself.

Both of these are hugely important parts of life, and I know of no one who would trade them away for a pill they swallow in the morning that gives them all their nutrition for the day.

Fast food chains optimize for two of them: taste and price, at the expense of nutrition.

Susie had kittens, and two of them had folded ears as well.

Over the next three years, forty-two folded-ear cats were born, and with them a new breed.

Soon everyone was zapping seeds and planting them and, lo and behold, it actually worked!

For environmentalist organizations like Greenpeace to be against GMO in all its forms under all conditions does nothing at all to serve them or the constituencies they purport to represent.

Sunscreens for plants protects them from ultraviolet and infrared radiation.

In the not too distant future, tiny robots will detect pests on produce and emit a signal to shoo them away.

And fascinating new ways to transport foods will keep them significantly fresher.

As people were dying in large numbers around them, officials did not think to save them.

Everyone, by contrast, would kiss the hand that fed them, regardless of how bloody it was.

I outline forty-five different ways this will happen—surely enough that even if you don't agree with them all, you will still have plenty of reason to be optimistic.

I offer them because they have something interesting in common.

Their aim, he said, was nothing less than "the lifting, from the backs and from the hearts of men, of their burden of arms and of fears, so that they may find before them a golden age of freedom and of peace."

As Frederick the Great observed almost two centuries earlier, "If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army."

Even in civilized corporate offices, professionals in business attire say their work tasks place them "down in the trenches" or that a certain "campaign" requires "guerrilla" marketing.

Because we value them, we are reluctant to give them up without a really good reason.

Not only are we eliminating historically warlike forms of government, we are replacing them with peaceful ones, namely democracy.

More precisely, it catalogues and tracks them and then allows you to communicate with them easily.

They may not bump into them very often in what we call "everyday life" but do know them well enough to friend them.

Nations will maintain their own traditions, holidays, music, idioms, diets, and a thousand things that make them different from other nations.

Computers will be able to reproduce them at will and hobbyists will still study them.

Mass communication means we no longer read a number like "a million dead"—we actually see them, see pictures of them.

In Othello is a character named Iago, an evil man who never does anything illegal himself but is always planting ideas in other people's minds, to get them to do his dirty work.

Ambrose replied that he was looking at the words and reading them that way.

We would then work feverishly on them for months before selling them for slightly less than we had paid.

As I review these points, none of them seem particularly like "stretches" to me.

My father made holes in these so that I could string them, and for a long time they kept me happy and contented.

I pulled two beads off and indicated to her that I wanted her to sew them on my doll.

In the days that followed I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and a few verbs like sit, stand and walk.

I had made many mistakes, and Miss Sullivan had pointed them out again and again with gentle patience.

If I did not know the words and idioms necessary to express my thoughts she supplied them, even suggesting conversation when I was unable to keep up my end of the dialogue.

He believed, or at least suspected, that Miss Sullivan and I had deliberately stolen the bright thoughts of another and imposed them on him to win his admiration.

I had a French grammar in raised print, and as I already knew some French, I often amused myself by composing in my head short exercises, using the new words as I came across them, and ignoring rules and other technicalities as much as possible.

The two years in New York were happy ones, and I look back to them with genuine pleasure.

The teachers at the Wright-Humason School were always planning how they might give the pupils every advantage that those who hear enjoy--how they might make much of few tendencies and passive memories in the cases of the little ones--and lead them out of the cramping circumstances in which their lives were set.

Of course my instructors had had no experience in teaching any but normal pupils, and my only means of conversing with them was reading their lips.

I rejoiced over all his successes, I shut my eyes to his faults, and wondered, not that he had them, but that they had not crushed or dwarfed his soul.

He had to pass five hours at a time to have them counted.

I could not follow with my eyes the geometrical figures drawn on the blackboard, and my only means of getting a clear idea of them was to make them on a cushion with straight and curved wires, which had bent and pointed ends.

He explained each time what I did not understand in the previous lesson, assigned new work, and took home with him the Greek exercises which I had written during the week on my typewriter, corrected them fully, and returned them to me.

But if they unintentionally placed obstacles in my way, I have the consolation of knowing that I overcame them all.

Usually I jot down what I can remember of them when I get home.

The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit.

Let them mock on.

One of them is the precious science of patience, which teaches us that we should take our education as we would take a walk in the country, leisurely, our minds hospitably open to impressions of every sort.

I think that was all; but I read them over and over, until the words were so worn and pressed I could scarcely make them out.

As we hastened through the long grass toward the hammock, the grasshoppers swarmed about us and fastened themselves on our clothes, and I remember that my teacher insisted upon picking them all off before we sat down, which seemed to me an unnecessary waste of time.

I read them in the intervals between study and play with an ever-deepening sense of pleasure.

I did not study nor analyze them--I did not know whether they were well written or not; I never thought about style or authorship.

They laid their treasures at my feet, and I accepted them as we accept the sunshine and the love of our friends.

I read La Fontaine's "Fables" first in an English translation, and enjoyed them only after a half-hearted fashion.

I cannot tell exactly when I began Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare"; but I know that I read them at first with a child's understanding and a child's wonder.

I felt vaguely that they could not be good even if they wished to, because no one seemed willing to help them or to give them a fair chance.

Even now I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them utterly.

I have since read Shakespeare's plays many times and know parts of them by heart, but I cannot tell which of them I like best.

My delight in them is as varied as my moods.

The prattle of the little ones and their pleasure in the stories I told them of elf and gnome, of hero and wily bear, are pleasant things to remember.

One of them, a splendid oak, is the special pride of my heart.

The squares are cut out, so that the men stand in them firmly.

I often tell them stories or teach them a game, and the winged hours depart and leave us good and happy.

Some of them would be found written in our literature and dear to the hearts of many, while others would be wholly unknown to most of my readers.

Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart.

Since Bishop Brooks died I have read the Bible through; also some philosophical works on religion, among them Swedenborg's "Heaven and Hell" and Drummond's "Ascent of Man," and I have found no creed or system more soul-satisfying than Bishop Brooks's creed of love.

Most of them I met first in the house of my good friend, Mr. Laurence Hutton.

I received from them gifts that have the gentle concurrence of the heart, books containing their own thoughts, soul-illumined letters, and photographs that I love to have described again and again.

To them and to a few friends with whom she is in closest sympathy she writes with intimate frankness whatever she is thinking about.

I help mother and teacher water them every night before supper.

Many very handsome houses and large soft green lawns around them and trees and bright flowers and fountains.

I am sorry for them because they cried much.

She assimilated words and practised with them, sometimes using them intelligently, sometimes repeating them in a parrot-like fashion.

Even when she did not fully understand words or ideas, she liked to set them down as though she did.

When the leaves and the trees fell, the water and the soil covered them; and then more trees grew and fell also, and were buried under water and soil.

The stars are so far away that people cannot tell much about them, without very excellent instruments.

When I am thirteen years old I shall visit them all myself.

I think of them every day and I love them dearly in my heart.

Give my love to all the little girls, and tell them that Helen loves them very, very much.

Perhaps the mocking bird is singing them to sleep.

Give them many sweet kisses for me.

We had some of them for supper, and they were very nice.

I love them very, very, very much.

Yesterday I read "In School Days" and "My Playmate," and I enjoyed them greatly.

When I visit England they want me to come to see them, and stay a few weeks.

They came while we were eating breakfast, and my friends enjoyed them with me.

If it is too warm in Tuscumbia for little sister to wear her pretty mittens, she can keep them because her sister made them for her.

I shall always keep them, and it will make me very happy to think that you found them, on that far away island, from which Columbus sailed to discover our dear country.

I told them all I knew about them.

The flowers were wilted, but the kind thought which came with them was as sweet and as fresh as newly pulled violets.

They do not make honey for us, like the bees, but many of them are as beautiful as the flowers they light upon, and they always delight the hearts of little children.

My parents were delighted to hear me speak, and I was overjoyed to give them such a happy surprise.

And we are always most glad of what we not merely see our friends enjoy, but of what we give them to enjoy.

And so He loved men Himself and though they were very cruel to Him and at last killed Him, He was willing to die for them because He loved them so.

Please tell the brave sailors, who have charge of the HELEN KELLER, that little Helen who stays at home will often think of them with loving thoughts.

Jack Frost had dressed them in gold and crimson.

Tell Mildred she must be kind to them for my sake.

I think you will like them too, so I will try to write them for you.

It is very beautiful to think that you can tell so many people of the heavenly Father's tender love for all His children even when they are not gentle and noble as He wishes them to be.

I hope the glad news which you will tell them will make their hearts beat fast with joy and love.

He has found out that doors have locks, and that little sticks and bits of paper can be got into the key-hole quite easily; but he does not seem very eager to get them out after they are in.

At the time this trouble seemed very grave and brought them much unhappiness.

Please accept them with the love and good wishes of your friend, HELEN KELLER.

It is because my books are full of the riches of which Mr. Ruskin speaks that I love them so dearly.

Some of them asked odd questions.

A lady seemed surprised that I loved flowers when I could not see their beautiful colors, and when I assured her I did love them, she said, "no doubt you feel the colors with your fingers."

I liked them both very much.

I did not like to trouble them while I was trying to get money for poor little Tommy, for of course it was more important that he should be educated than that my people should have books to read. 4.

They permitted themselves startling liberties when any one caressed them, crowding themselves almost into one's arms and helping themselves without ceremony to kisses, apparently unconscious of the impropriety of their conduct.

I had known about them for a long time; but I had never thought that I should see them, and talk to them; and I can scarcely realize now that this great pleasure has been mine!

The two distinguished authors were very gentle and kind, and I could not tell which of them I loved best.

Teacher has read me his lively stories about his boyhood, and I enjoyed them greatly.

Perhaps our guardian angel gathers them up as we drop them, and will give them back to us in the beautiful sometime when we have grown wiser, and learned how to use them rightly.

"Slim" would describe them, if they were anything like the saw-horses I have seen.

On the other hand, it would be a pledge to the world that we intend to stand by our declaration of war, and give Cuba to the Cubans, as soon as we have fitted them to assume the duties and responsibilities of a self-governing people....

But somehow, I should prefer to see the originals in the place where Genius meant them to remain, not only as a hymn of praise to the gods, but also as a monument of the glory of Greece.

Why, only a little while ago people thought it quite impossible to teach the deaf-blind anything; but no sooner was it proved possible than hundreds of kind, sympathetic hearts were fired with the desire to help them, and now we see how many of those poor, unfortunate persons are being taught to see the beauty and reality of life.

I have at least the satisfaction of seeing them through the eyes of my friends, which is a real pleasure.

Why, I find it hard to understand them sometimes when they spell on their fingers.

Among them are "Henry Esmond," "Bacon's Essays" and extracts from "English Literature."

My friends think it very strange that they should hesitate so long, especially when I have not asked them to simplify my work in the least, but only to modify it so as to meet the existing circumstances.

Katie played with Miss Rhoades's rings and took them away, saying with a merry laugh, "You shall not have them again!"

On one of them I noticed that the strings were of wire, and having had some experience in bead work, I said I thought they would break.

After that he asked me if the strings were all right and changed them at once when I answered in the negative.

But it is to be remembered that Miss Keller has written many things in her autobiography for the fun of writing them, and the disillusion, which the writer of the editorial took seriously, is in great part humorous.

Indeed, at one time it was believed that the best way for them to communicate was through systematized gestures, the sign language invented by the Abbe de l'Epee.

Skill in the use of words and her habit of playing with them make her ready with mots and epigrams.

She was slower than he expected her to be in identifying them by their relative weight and size.

She suggests herself that she can know them better than we do, because she can get the true dimensions and appreciate more immediately the solid nature of a sculptured figure.

When she found them she said, "One is silent."

Her manuscripts seldom contain typographical errors when she hands them to Miss Sullivan to read.

Miss Keller reads them all.

They cost a great deal to publish and they have not a large enough sale to make them profitable to the publisher; but there are several institutions with special funds to pay for embossed books.

It was said of old time, 'Lord forgive them, they know not what they do!'

I do not doubt that she derived from them much pleasure and not a little profit.

She imitated them very well and pointed to the doll.

I shook my head and took them all off and made her feel of the two wooden beads and the one glass bead.

She examined them thoughtfully and began again.

I took them off and showed her that the two wooden ones must go on first, then the glass bead.

She puts her hands in our plates and helps herself, and when the dishes are passed, she grabs them and takes out whatever she wants.

There is a piazza in front, covered with vines that grow so luxuriantly that you have to part them to see the garden beyond.

I don't think she has any special tenderness for them--I have never seen her caress them; but she dresses and undresses them many times during the day and handles them exactly as she has seen her mother and the nurse handle her baby sister.

Helen knows several words now, but has no idea how to use them, or that everything has a name.

She has learned three new words, and when I give her the objects, the names of which she has learned, she spells them unhesitatingly; but she seems glad when the lesson is over.

The improvement they cannot help seeing in their child has given them more confidence in me.

Later I join them, and we make the rounds of the outhouses.

HERE ARE SOME OF THEM: DOOR, OPEN, SHUT, GIVE, GO, COME, and a great many more.

I used my little stock of beads, cards and straws at first because I didn't know what else to do; but the need for them is past, for the present at any rate.

If she wanted to indicate something large, she spread the fingers of both hands as wide as she could, and brought them together, as if to clasp a big ball.

I taught her the word "puppy" and drew her hand over them all, while they sucked, and spelled "puppies."

After she had played with them a little while, the thought occurred to her that the puppies must have special names, like people, and she asked for the name of each pup.

My mind is full of ideas; but I cannot get them into working shape.

I think I shall find them helpful.

It's queer how ready people always are with advice in any real or imaginary emergency, and no matter how many times experience has shown them to be wrong, they continue to set forth their opinions, as if they had received them from the Almighty!

The next morning we were astonished to find that she remembered all of them, and recognized every one she had met the night before.

She taught the young people the alphabet, and several of them learned to talk with her.

These questions were sometimes asked under circumstances which rendered them embarrassing, and I made up my mind that something must be done.

The mother bird lays her eggs in a nest and keeps them warm until the birdlings are hatched.

These experiences are like photographic negatives, until language develops them and brings out the memory-images.

I told her that I could see things with my eyes, and that she could see them with her fingers.

About this time I sent a list of the words she knew to Mr. Anagnos, and he very kindly had them printed for her.

Her mother and I cut up several sheets of printed words so that she could arrange them into sentences.

I wished her to make the groups of threes and supposed she would then have to count them in order to know what number fifteen threes would make.

She said to the keeper, "I will take the baby lions home and teach them to be mild."

Some of them cried, and the wild man of Borneo shrank from her sweet little face in terror.

I want her to know children and to be with them as much as possible.

She objected to its miscellaneous fruits and began to remove them, evidently thinking they were all meant for her.

She placed them in a chair, resisting all temptation to look at them until every child had received his gifts.

When I see that she is eager to tell me something, but is hampered because she does not know the words, I supply them and the necessary idioms, and we get along finely.

Of course, she hung her stocking--two of them lest Santa Claus should forget one, and she lay awake for a long time and got up two or three times to see if anything had happened.

I appreciate the kind things Mr. Anagnos has said about Helen and me; but his extravagant way of saying them rubs me the wrong way.

I am going to Memphis to see them soon, and they will hug and kiss me.

She kissed them all, boys and girls, willing or unwilling.

She seemed to think at first that the children all belonged to the visiting ministers; but soon she recognized some little friends among them, and I told her the ministers didn't bring their children with them.

She looked disappointed and said, "I'll send them many kisses."

Almost every one on the train was a physician, and Dr. Keller seemed to know them all.

If you had called these sensations respectively BLACK and WHITE, he would have adopted them as readily; but he would mean by BLACK and WHITE the same things that he means by SWEET and SOUR.

One of them pulled me by the sleeve and said, "Girl is blind."

Wouldn't the children understand if you talked to them about Helen?

"No," she replied, "I think not; but children learn better if they write about things that concern them personally."

Helen remained motionless through them all, not once showing the least sign that she realized what was going on.

She smelt of the flowers, but showed no desire to pluck them; and, when I gathered a few for her, she refused to have them pinned on her dress.

On her return to the house after her visit to the cemetery, she ran to the closet where these toys were kept, and carried them to my friend, saying, "They are poor little Florence's."

I put my little babies to sleep in Florence's little bed, and I take them to ride in her carriage.

She is very fond of all the living things at home, and she will not have them unkindly treated.

One day, while her pony and her donkey were standing side by side, Helen went from one to the other, examining them closely.

You must remember, dear teacher, that Greek parents were very particular with their children, and they used to let them listen to wise words, and I think they understood some of them.

I must stay and conquer them now, and she did.

In selecting books for Helen to read, I have never chosen them with reference to her deafness and blindness.

She was familiar with the words of the last sentence, and was delighted when allowed to act them out.

Can any one doubt after reading these questions that the child who was capable of asking them was also capable of understanding at least their elementary answers?

Here are some of them: "What did God make the new worlds out of?"

I said, "No; because, if there were no death, our world would soon be so crowded with living creatures that it would be impossible for any of them to live comfortably."

Teach them to think and read and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.

Let us lead them during the first years to find their greatest pleasure in Nature.

Let them run in the fields, learn about animals, and observe real things.

All day long in their play-time and work-time Miss Sullivan kept spelling into her pupil's hand, and by that Helen Keller absorbed words, just as the child in the cradle absorbs words by hearing thousands of them before he uses one and by associating the words with the occasion of their utterance.

By watching them, she learned to treat her pupil as nearly as possible like an ordinary child.

So I want to say to those who are trying to learn to speak and those who are teaching them: Be of good cheer.

On the other hand, the peculiar value to her of language, which ordinary people take for granted as a necessary part of them like their right hand, made her think about language and love it.

As he came in sight of the rose-bushes that grew near the side of the house, he suddenly clapped his hands, and with a little shout of joy stopped to look at them; they were all covered with lovely rosebuds.

Now he found out that his father's words were true, for a few days of warm weather had turned the green balls into rosebuds, and they were SO beautiful that it was enough to make Birdie stand still before them, his blue eyes dancing with delight and his little hands clasped tightly together.

Please give my love to your good Greek friends, and tell them that I shall come to Athens some day.

So he called together his merry little fairies, and showing them a number of jars and vases filled with gold and precious stones, told them to carry those carefully to the palace of Santa Claus, and give them to him with the compliments of King Frost.

Still, for awhile, the frost fairies did not notice this strange occurrence, for they were down on the grass, so far below the tree-tops that the wonderful shower of treasure was a long time in reaching them; but at last one of them said, Hark!

Then the fairies thanked him for his forgiveness, and promised to work very hard to please him; and the good-natured king took them all up in his arms, and carried them safely home to his palace.

The old King will welcome you kindly, for he loves children, and it is his chief delight to give them pleasure.

So he called together the merry little fairies of his household and, showing them the jars and vases containing his treasures, he bade them carry them to the palace of Santa Claus as quickly as they could.

The fairies promised obedience, and were off in a twinkling, dragging the heavy jars and vases along after them as well as they could, now and then grumbling a little at having such a hard task, for they were idle fairies and loved to play better than to work.

At first King Frost was very angry, and the fairies trembled and crouched lower in their hiding-places, and I do not know what might have happened to them if just then a party of boys and girls had not entered the wood.

Such rich treasures must be kept in a safe place, and so she had imagined them stored in jars and vases in one part of the royal palace.

The reason that we do not observe this process in ordinary children is, because we seldom observe them at all, and because they are fed from so many sources that the memories are confused and mutually destructive.

There is no affectation about them, and as they come straight from your heart, so they go straight to mine.

I was very fond of bananas, and one night I dreamed that I found a long string of them in the dining-room, near the cupboard, all peeled and deliciously ripe, and all I had to do was to stand under the string and eat as long as I could eat.

There is no play in them, for this comes after work.

It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do.

I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind.

The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live.

But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage?

Answer me these questions, and then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental.

In the course of three or four years, when the country became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several thousands.

Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become better acquainted with it.

The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place.

When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way.

A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials.

It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin--the architecture of the grave--and "carpenter" is but another name for "coffin-maker."

I do not mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think a good deal like that; I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end.

I might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it.

For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them--who were above such trifling.

In cold weather it was no little amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching eggs.

They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths.

The human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills, may be alarmed.

There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away.

It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them--dragging his trap.

However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor.

Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind.

Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens.

If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads?

The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them.

They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave.

They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature.

They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them.

It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them.

I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us.

New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all.

I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there.

It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house.

I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable.

Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay.

And here's your pay for them! screams the countryman's whistle; timber like long battering-rams going twenty miles an hour against the city's walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden that dwell within them.

Next Spanish hides, with the tails still preserving their twist and the angle of elevation they had when the oxen that wore them were careering over the pampas of the Spanish Main--a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices.

Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttingsville, Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, who imports for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance stands over his bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals on the coast, how they may affect the price for him, telling his customers this moment, as he has told them twenty times before this morning, that he expects some by the next train of prime quality.

Methinks I hear them barking behind the Peterboro' Hills, or panting up the western slope of the Green Mountains.

Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men.

Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing.

When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.

These being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in them; the most eat of them.

Another time when Winslow visited them, it being a season of plenty with them, there was no deficiency in this respect.

I loved to sound him on the various reforms of the day, and he never failed to look at them in the most simple and practical light.

He could defend many institutions better than any philosopher, because, in describing them as they concerned him, he gave the true reason for their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to him any other.

I told them that I drank at the pond, and pointed thither, offering to lend them a dipper.

Half-witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came to see me; but I endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they had, and make their confessions to me; in such cases making wit the theme of our conversation; and so was compensated.

Indeed, I found some of them to be wiser than the so-called overseers of the poor and selectmen of the town, and thought it was time that the tables were turned.

Men who did not know when their visit had terminated, though I went about my business again, answering them from greater and greater remoteness.

Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.

And when the sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the most favorable breezes told no tale, I knew that they had got the last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honey with which it was smeared.

It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and selling them--the last was the hardest of all--I might add eating, for I did taste.

The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market.

When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden splash and rippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths.

The hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some land of sylvan spectacle.

No, no; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor.

Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success.

I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject--I care not how obscene my words are--but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity.

You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them.

So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward.

It is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's call which gathers them again.

They grew also behind my house, and one large tree, which almost overshadowed it, was, when in flower, a bouquet which scented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and the jays got most of its fruit; the last coming in flocks early in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burs before they fell, I relinquished these trees to them and visited the more distant woods composed wholly of chestnut.

Each morning, when they were numbed with cold, I swept some of them out, but I did not trouble myself much to get rid of them; I even felt complimented by their regarding my house as a desirable shelter.

The mortar on them was fifty years old, and was said to be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which men love to repeat whether they are true or not.

Many of the villages of Mesopotamia are built of second-hand bricks of a very good quality, obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the cement on them is older and probably harder still.

He brought his own knife, though I had two, and we used to scour them by thrusting them into the earth.

I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each.

These bubbles are from an eightieth to an eighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your face reflected in them through the ice.

There may be thirty or forty of them to a square inch.

It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food.

As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice--once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat.

There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last.

Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half-century after they had grown up and died--blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine.

They were manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect for them; but the squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they were taking what was their own.

I used to start them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods at sunset to "bud" the wild apple trees.

They will come regularly every evening to particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little.

These trees were alive and apparently flourishing at midsummer, and many of them had grown a foot, though completely girdled; but after another winter such were without exception dead.

If the forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them concealment, and they become more numerous than ever.

These ice-cutters are a merry race, full of jest and sport, and when I went among them they were wont to invite me to saw pit-fashion with them, I standing underneath.

As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard's paws or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds.

You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into.

But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools.

It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.

As soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the brute.

England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India.

This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.

If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.

Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.

If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete list.

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince.

And really you appreciate them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them cared about.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'" Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting Napoleon's words.

The people only gave him power that he might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a great man.

Tell them to bring me a bottle.

The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August, and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join them on the march to Radzivilov.

"Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered, returning his smile.

"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to make something exceptional of them," said the visitor.

The count sat between them and listened attentively.

Tall and stout, holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if rolling them up.

You must look for husbands for them whether you like it or not....

She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with the pleasure of her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and addressed herself to Pierre.

After them other couples followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all the children, tutors, and governesses followed singly.

Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them and down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.

Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some others, and she found them on my table and said she'd show them to Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him to marry me, but that he'll marry Julie.

Natasha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look at Papa!" though as it was they never took their eyes off the couple.

I still believed in people, loved them, and sacrificed myself.

Last winter she wheedled herself in here and told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us, especially about Sophie--I can't repeat them--that it made the count quite ill and he would not see us for a whole fortnight.

These men pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.

Seeing them pass, Prince Vasili drew back with obvious impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of desperation slammed the door with all her might.

Here, Pierre, tell them your opinion, said she, turning to the young man who, having come quite close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the princess which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of Prince Vasili.

I understand such feelings in others, and if never having felt them I cannot approve of them, neither do I condemn them.

I never could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity.

However painful it may be to me, should the Almighty lay the duties of wife and mother upon me I shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself by examining my feelings toward him whom He may give me for husband.

The two women let go of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each other's hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and again began kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince Andrew's surprise both began to cry and kissed again.

Suvorov couldn't manage them so what chance has Michael Kutuzov?

As Sterne says: 'We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them.'

All were waiting for them to come out.

So remember, these are my memoirs; hand them to the Emperor after my death.

You will find them useful.

Looking at their boots he several times shook his head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian general with an expression which seemed to say that he was not blaming anyone, but could not help noticing what a bad state of things it was.

Nesvitski laughed and nudged the others to make them look at the wag.

The Austrians, you see, are putting them down.

Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great things of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with them Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant.

I only congratulated them, said Zherkov.

"Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting up and looking carelessly about him.

As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of doubt fell from him.

Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but I am not a diplomatist.

Look there in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging something.

He was glancing at everyone with a clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under fire.

I'll dwive them off.

Will they get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot range and wipe them out?

Two were misdirected and the shot went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of hussars and knocked three of them over.

There--they are shouting again, and again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above me and around...

But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting at you like a target.

Some of them were talking (he heard Russian words), others were eating bread; the more severely wounded looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children, at the envoy hurrying past them.

"That's for them all," he said to the officer who came up.

He again vividly recalled the details of the battle, no longer dim, but definite and in the concise form in which he imagined himself stating them to the Emperor Francis.

The minister drew the remaining papers together, arranged them evenly, and then raised his head.

These sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room.

"I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I know the facts, I can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling.

According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during the night.

He lets them enter the tÃªte-de-pont. * They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg, and so on.

All along the sides of the road fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies, crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks.

Bagration was to make this march without resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and if he succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as long as possible.

Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires, dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first time for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was in store for him.

The officers don't keep them in hand.

This morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again.

I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit.

Now you, Captain, and he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer who without his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to dry), in only his stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not altogether comfortably.

The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions, licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats.

All their faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home awaiting peaceful encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before an action in which at least half of them would be left on the field.

He made some notes on two points, intending to mention them to Bagration.

Oh, you clever people, said a third manly voice interrupting them both.

Prince Andrew listened attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the commanding officers and the orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no orders were really given, but that Prince Bagration tried to make it appear that everything done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was done, if not by his direct command, at least in accord with his intentions.

In front of them rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the smoke, and an officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after the crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them back.

All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French column advancing against them and winding down over the uneven ground.

Several of our men fell, among them the round-faced officer who had marched so gaily and complacently.

They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and they halted in silence.

All were conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether they would cross it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated them all.

One of them said something strange, not in Russian.

The regimental commander and Major Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the commander's stirrup, almost leaning against him.

Look at them scurrying!

The French columns that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as though in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the right of the village and began firing them at Tushin's battery.

Twice they noticed the French appearing below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them.

Though the orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages.

Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!

You're very smart! one of them shouted hoarsely.

Tushin told them to give the man some water.

One of them stumbled.

When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'--and that's what I did.

He had not seen the hussars all that day, but had heard about them from an infantry officer.

Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the glory of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie devoid of any foundation.

To rid himself of them he closed his eyes.

He tried to get away from them, but they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair's breadth.

Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that what he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that remarks which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind became foolish as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary Hippolyte's stupidest remarks came out clever and apt.

The aunt was just speaking of a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to Pierre's father, Count Bezukhov, and showed them her own box.

She already had power over him, and between them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier of his own will.

"If you marry it will be a different thing," she continued, uniting them both in one glance.

He recalled her former words and looks and the words and looks of those who had seen them together.

To each of them he made some careless and agreeable remark except to Pierre and Helene, whose presence he seemed not to notice.

But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, much as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however they avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant as they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances they gave that the story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the food were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company was directed to-- Pierre and Helene.

Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an important occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go away, refusing to let her see them off.

This happiness is for those who have not in them what there is in you.

He was about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she intercepted his lips and met them with her own.

To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to dress her would prolong their banter and insistence.

They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel to insist.

She was looking at them with an expression they both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad.

This expression in Princess Mary did not frighten them (she never inspired fear in anyone), but they knew that when it appeared on her face, she became mute and was not to be shaken in her determination.

Princess Mary saw them all and saw them in detail.

It was as if he said to them: I know you, I know you, but why should I bother about you?

Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them and even Princess Mary felt herself pleasantly made to share in these merry reminiscences.

She drove them away and tried to conceal them.

"What devil brought them here?" thought he, while Tikhon was putting the nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest.

Princess Mary looked at them in silence.

"It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her lips.

When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him, embraced his bald head, over which she again looked at the letter and the portrait, and in order to press them again to her lips, she slightly pushed away the bald head.

And so it was decided to send the letters and money by the Grand Duke's courier to Boris and Boris was to forward them to Nicholas.

Berg and Boris, having rested after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to them, playing chess.

You'll frighten them! said Boris.

Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them such a fright!

He asked him to tell them how and where he got his wound.

He could not tell them simply that everyone went at a trot and that he fell off his horse and sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could from a Frenchman into the wood.

And so he told them all that.

Au revoir! exclaimed Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them both he went out.

From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group was seen approaching.

Upon them the undivided, tensely passionate attention of that whole mass of men was concentrated.

One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he had taken from the prisoner.

Casually, while surveying the squadron, the Emperor's eyes met Rostov's and rested on them for not more than two seconds.

Rostov saw how the Emperor's rather round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run down them, how his left foot began convulsively tapping the horse's side with the spur, and how the well-trained horse looked round unconcerned and did not stir.

Weyrother complied and Dohkturov noted them down.

You have heard them, and we shall all do our duty.

All these memories will be no more, none of them will have any meaning for me.

All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division-stipulates that no one is to interfere with his arrangements--leads his division to the decisive point, and gains the victory alone.

"Well then," Prince Andrew answered himself, "I don't know what will happen and don't want to know, and can't, but if I want this--want glory, want to be known to men, want to be loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want nothing but that and live only for that.

All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in this mist!

I saw them this evening on that knoll; if they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too....

Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the direction from which the shouting came.

The column moved forward without knowing where and unable, from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, to see either the place they were leaving or that to which they were going.

Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up behind.

I'd shoot them, the scoundrels!

From information he had received the evening before, from the sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far away in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen constituted the center of the Russian army, and that that center was already sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked.

He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and gave them the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to lead that column himself.

Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with which I shall lead the army."

"Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the village!" he said angrily to a general who had ridden up.

"I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency," answered the general.

Two of them rode side by side in front, at full gallop.

Among them were grooms leading the Tsar's beautiful relay horses covered with embroidered cloths.

Both of them led downhill and troops were marching along both.

Prince Andrew, who was a little behind looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask him for a field glass.

"Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably realizing that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and rode to the right.

The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by them it was difficult to get out again.

But he did not look at them: he looked only at what was going on in front of him--at the battery.

Give it them! he mentally exclaimed at these sounds, and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther and farther into the region where the army was already in action.

Rostov got out of their way, involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.

Hardly had the Horse Guards passed Rostov before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back saw that their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry with red epaulets, probably French.

At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him, disappeared in the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go where he was sent.

"We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing talkative.

"Can you imagine it?" and he began describing how the Guards, having taken up their position and seeing troops before them, thought they were Austrians, and all at once discovered from the cannon balls discharged by those troops that they were themselves in the front line and had unexpectedly to go into action.

May the devil take them--the traitors!

Only to get past them quicker, quicker!

A cannon ball killed someone behind them, another fell in front and splashed Dolokhov with blood.

The soldiers near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to make them turn and move on.

Above him again was the same lofty sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher, and between them gleamed blue infinity.

Not only did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at once forgot them.

"There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army, that he is probably tired of them," said another officer.

We can't get them from anyone else.

The men who set the tone in conversation--Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemski--did not show themselves at the club, but met in private houses in intimate circles, and the Moscovites who took their opinions from others--Ilya Rostov among them--remained for a while without any definite opinion on the subject of the war and without leaders.

All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and the words of Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to battle by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to show them that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained and held back!

Here, as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he treated them with absent-minded contempt.

The old count came up to them and pressed Dolokhov's hand.

Well, I will read them, then!

Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and serious expression.

But the author himself took the verses and began reading them aloud.

Facing them sat Pierre, beside Prince Nesvitski.

Pierre recalled how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dolokhov's living at their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife's beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had not left them for a day.

He remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in his moments of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and dropping them into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel without any reason, or shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol.

I don't care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love so that I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle if they stood in my way.

I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two or three friends--you among them--and as for the rest I only care about them in so far as they are harmful or useful.

And most of them are harmful, especially the women.

Nicholas understood that something must have happened between Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both at dinner.

So said the mothers as they watched their young people executing their newly learned steps, and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced till they were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and women who came to these balls with an air of condescension and found them most enjoyable.

Denisov sat down by the old ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot, told them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the young people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best pupil, were the first couple.

He glided silently on one foot half across the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs was dashing straight at them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and spreading out his legs, he stopped short on his heels, stood so a second, stamped on the spot clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round, and, striking his left heel against his right, flew round again in a circle.

Dolokhov was no longer listening to stories or telling them, but followed every movement of Rostov's hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against him.

"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas, glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother with the old lady.

It's one--let them sing!

Without changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could go on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed him.

His shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of them Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a death's head.

Have you helped them physically and morally?

No, tell them to harness.

Hence we have a secondary aim, that of preparing our members as much as possible to reform their hearts, to purify and enlighten their minds, by means handed on to us by tradition from those who have striven to attain this mystery, and thereby to render them capable of receiving it.

He went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to give the pre-eminence.

He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet.

Among them stood a man whose white shirt was stained with blood.

On seeing this, Pierre moved forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce it.

Some of them Pierre had met in Petersburg society.

Give them to the woman whom you shall honor most of all.

All the Masons sat down in their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the necessity of humility.

A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went away to his estates.

Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable that not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure them, and she doubts the means we have of gaining them.

Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally asked Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state he found the Prussian army.

Boris, speaking with deliberation, told them in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies and the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of his own about the facts he was recounting.

It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the boy who was in a high fever.

"Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his father's letter, he returned to the nursery.

Opening them mechanically he began reading.

Then he bursts into one of his wild furies and rages at everyone and everything, seizes the letters, opens them, and reads those from the Emperor addressed to others.

When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office and explained to them his intentions and wishes.

He felt that these consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with them or make them move.

In another place the women with infants in arms met him to thank him for releasing them from hard work.

The same love of others, a desire to do something for them, a desire for their approval.--So I lived for others, and not almost, but quite, ruined my life.

What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum for the aged?

"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools," he went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you want to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of.

Others are being born and there are plenty of them as it is.

Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking round at the carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back porch.

The servants came out to meet them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was expected back soon.

Near them, in an armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek expression on her childlike face.

It was evident that Prince Andrew's ironical tone toward the pilgrims and Princess Mary's helpless attempts to protect them were their customary long-established relations on the matter.

"Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him) into Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about, looked round at them all with crafty eyes.

I understand them so well and have the greatest respect for them.

With the stern old prince and the gentle, timid Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre at once felt like an old friend.

And during the two days of the young man's visit he was extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.

As usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires, steamed themselves before them naked; smoked, picked out and baked sprouting rotten potatoes, told and listened to stories of Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly, or the priest's laborer Mikolka.

Rostov brought them to his quarters, placed them in his own lodging, and kept them for some weeks while the old man was recovering.

Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth hut, dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and turf.

I ordered you not to let them eat that Mashka woot stuff!

"Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov.

The soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared them with the other squadrons.

But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully showed them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental commander in which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence.

In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing, that he thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed up in it, but that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not in the least fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels dared attack him he would give them an answer that they would not easily forget.

Most of them were unconscious and paid no attention to the newcomers.

Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone.

Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight.

As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which presented arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the opposite flank, and at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon.

All on silver plate, one of them was saying.

Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner.

There he found so many people, among them officers who, like himself, had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in getting a dinner.

Neither gnarled fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in evidence now.

As happens to some people, especially to men who judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone new-- especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation--expected to discover in him the perfection of human qualities.

The Petersburg Freemasons all came to see him, tried to ingratiate themselves with him, and it seemed to them all that he was preparing something for them and concealing it.

A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened, at which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers what he had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their order.

It is impossible to eradicate the passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it is therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his passions within the limits of virtue.

As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state, each of them again training two others and all being closely united, everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret accomplished much for the welfare of mankind.

Bilibin saved up his epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova's presence.

He entered his wife's drawing room as one enters a theater, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased to see everyone, and equally indifferent to them all.

But on the contrary, my papa and mamma are now provided for--I have arranged that rent for them in the Baltic Provinces--and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with her fortune and my good management we can get along nicely.

Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently, seemed to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke rapturously and gratefully of the merits of her son and the brilliant career on which he had entered.

From the carriages emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while ladies in satin and ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps which were let down for them with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly and noiselessly over the baize at the entrance.

Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high society, was to accompany them to the ball.

Sonya was finishing dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about helping them all, was behindhand.

Before and behind them other visitors were entering, also talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses.

"That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies.

Yes, she is still the most beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna!

But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome, dark man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a window talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon.

A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside.

She and the countess and Sonya were standing by themselves as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of strangers, with no one interested in them and not wanted by anyone.

Boris passed them twice and each time turned away.

Natasha gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not she who was dancing that first turn of the waltz.

He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and asked his daughter whether she was enjoying herself.

It seemed that in this company the insignificance of those people was so definitely accepted that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good humored ridicule.

Two letters brought by a courier were handed to Speranski and he took them to his study.

Then he vividly pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan; he remembered the peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally applying to them the Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished that he could have spent so much time on such useless work.

Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited before, and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed acquaintance at the ball.

Read them... said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince Andrew had written in Natasha's album.

At first the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince Andrew; he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to be.

Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not occur to me; I should then have dismissed them with horror, but now they are very clear and certain.

Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by their simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep meaning, that several times she was on the point of abandoning everything and running away from home.

What was new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due to the bad state of their affairs.

The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by with resolute strides and went into the house.

He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure.

"Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my dogs," she added to the huntsman.

"In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel the distance that ought to separate them at that moment.

Shall I loose them or not?

That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully with the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest moment of his life.

Their horses, bridled and with high saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying.

There, it has beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois.

She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her plump white hands deftly took from it the bottles and various hors d'oeuvres and dishes and arranged them on the table.

The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the same kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole being.

He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent huntsmen to ride in front with lanterns.

They could not see the horses, but only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.

There was still the hunting establishment which Nicholas had enlarged.

Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned quickly to hide them and left the room.

"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.

On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a samovar, though it was not at all the time for tea.

No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as Natasha did.

She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send them on some errand.

She seemed to be trying whether any of them would get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one's orders so readily as they did hers.

Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they shared the same reminiscences.

Tell them to take it away, replied Natasha.

None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord.

The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks, innkeepers, and ladies--frightening and funny--bringing in with them the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas games.

The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their costumes, went into the drawing room.

Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them about a dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."

It was decided that the count must not go, but that if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and shy, more urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.

While they drove past the garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows.

It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given by the side horses who pulled harder--ever increasing their gallop--that one noticed how fast the troyka was flying.

The horses showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh--beside them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused glimpses of swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they were passing.

Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male garments were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from behind the door.

Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by the dancers, who--having decided once for all that being disguised, no one would recognize them--were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.

Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the mummers, admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly how they suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for having entertained her so well.

The visitors were invited to supper in the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to them in the ballroom.

"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.

Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood and across and along them a network of shadows from the bare old lime trees fell on the snow and on the path.

Sonya kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little hands pressed them to his cheeks.

The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son again, but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a cruelty neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to catch Nicholas and for ingratitude.

But he had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression of his face caused his mother to await with terror, and which would perhaps have forever remained a cruel memory to them both.

But the countess' health obliged them to delay their departure from day to day.

Young ladies, married and unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper.

She did not even notice the special attentions and amiabilities shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who was visiting them for the third time already.

I should like them to meet here.

You have known them a long time, said Princess Mary.

Bring them here, she said, pointing to the portmanteaus and not greeting anyone.

When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things and tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna kissed them all in due order.

As for them"--and she pointed to the girls--"tomorrow I'll take them first to the Iberian shrine of the Mother of God, and then we'll drive to the Super-Rogue's.

The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by another in the large hall and they whispered to one another.

At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the princess begged them to walk up.

She greeted the father and daughter with special politeness and showed them to the princess' room.

She had decided to receive them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in some freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs' visit.

Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and with a happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face.

"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did not exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of his lips.

As they were leaving the theater Anatole came up to them, called their carriage, and helped them in.

As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French actresses--with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to be on intimate relations.

There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies, and he flirted with a few of them at the balls.

But he did not run after the unmarried girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most of them plain.

She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised them, as well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze," which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one like it.

On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there.

At Kamenka a relay of horses was to wait which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they would hasten abroad with post horses.

Balaga was a famous troyka driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and had given them good service with his troykas.

More than once he had driven them through the town with gypsies and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes.

More than once they had beaten him, and more than once they had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira, which he loved; and he knew more than one thing about each of them which would long ago have sent an ordinary man to Siberia.

In their service he risked his skin and his life twenty times a year, and in their service had lost more horses than the money he had from them would buy.

But he liked them; liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked upsetting a driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full gallop through the Moscow streets.

Only a couple of times a year--when he knew from their valets that they had money in hand--he would turn up of a morning quite sober and with a deep bow would ask them to help him.

I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew numb in the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins--'Catch hold yourself, your excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom of the sleigh and sprawled there.

It wasn't a case of urging them on, there was no holding them in till we reached the place.

Hard as it may be, I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and will hide it from the count.

Yet some fate constantly threw them together.

Amuse yourself with women like my wife--with them you are within your rights, for they know what you want of them.

"I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to forgive me."

Looking at them Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to mention the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone else.

Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.

For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion.

The reasons on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him would never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a pretext for aggression.

He could not utter them, though he wished to do so.

Barclay is said to be the most capable of them all, but I cannot say so, judging by his first movements.

He knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon had any significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them when he came to his senses.

There are eighty thousand of them and they fight like lions.

Napoleon, without giving them a glance, turned to Balashev:

Balashev, who was on the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as "all roads lead to Rome," so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and "among them the road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose."

I'll drive them out.

Let him prepare an asylum for them in Russia!

Not only could he no longer think the thoughts that had first come to him as he lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later enlarged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his solitude at Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to recall them and the bright and boundless horizons they had revealed.

But though externally all remained as of old, the inner relations of all these people had changed since Prince Andrew had seen them last.

During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but they were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for whose sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them all feel awkward.

That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to them to defend their country--the very incitement which was the chief cause of Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the Tsar's personal presence in Moscow--was suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting the army.

Without heeding the end of the Italian's remarks, and as though not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkonski, addressed him graciously.

The success of a military action depends not on them, but on the man in the ranks who shouts, 'We are lost!' or who shouts, 'Hurrah!'

And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov battle, which he had heard at the staff.

He recounted how Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam under terrific fire and had charged with them beside him.

Since the campaigns of Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostov knew by experience that men always lie when describing military exploits, as he himself had done when recounting them; besides that, he had experience enough to know that nothing happens in war at all as we can imagine or relate it.

Mary Hendrikhovna obliged them with the loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and behind that screen Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka who had brought their kits, changed their wet things for dry ones.

Two of them! said Rostov.

Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers grew still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from laughter, for which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts.

The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the cavalry to pass.

He felt instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons now, the latter could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be made it must be done now, at that very moment, or it would be too late.

Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to have a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin.

She was so ill that it was impossible for them to consider in how far she was to blame for what had happened.

She could not eat or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them feel, was in danger.

Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine--not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs.

She hardly ever left the house and of those who came to see them was glad to see only one person, Pierre.

When she understood them her personal feeling became interwoven in the prayers with shades of its own.

As Natasha, at her mother's side, passed through the crowd behind a liveried footman who cleared the way for them, she heard a young man speaking about her in too loud a whisper.

When they prayed for those who love us, she prayed for the members of her own family, her father and mother and Sonya, realizing for the first time how wrongly she had acted toward them, and feeling all the strength of her love for them.

Pierre came early so as to find them alone.

I'll drive home, I must have left them there.

But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom, had found them in Pierre's hat, where he had carefully tucked them under the lining.

There, there, I tell you, and the count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably to reread them in his study before having a nap.

The firing was still proceeding when officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting came running out of the cathedral, and after them others in a more leisurely manner: caps were again raised, and those who had run to look at the cannon ran back again.

The people, with Petya among them, rushed toward the balcony.

Seeing this the Emperor had a plateful of biscuits brought him and began throwing them down from the balcony.

Our lives and property--take them, Your Majesty!

These he put down beside him--not letting anyone read them at dinner.

"No peace, damn them!" he muttered, angry he knew not with whom.

We'd have to pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobuzh and I tell them they're not Christians to ask it!

The orders were not to let them in.

They say the other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove them into the river Marina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one day.

Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who had come in, and settled up with the innkeeper.

On seeing the soldiers he was about to shout at them, but suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair, burst into sobs and laughter:

Don't let those devils get it! he cried, taking some bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street.

Soldiers were continually rushing backwards and forwards near it, and he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat dragging burning beams into another yard across the street, while others carried bundles of hay.

"Well then," continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych, "report to them as I have told you"; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute beside him, he touched his horse and rode down the side street.

The peasants were ruined; some of them too had gone to Bogucharovo, only a few remained.

"Yes, let them have it," replied Prince Andrew.

He could not resist looking at them once more.

I told them his election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor.

Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and bring the man to him.

Thrust them aside as she would, questions continually recurred to her as to how she would order her life now, after that.

She could not understand them, but tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly repeated the words he uttered.

The doctor thought he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: "Mary, are you afraid?"

Then he again opened his eyes and said something none of them could understand for a long time, till at last Tikhon understood and repeated it.

They differed from them in speech, dress, and disposition.

The old prince used to approve of them for their endurance at work when they came to Bald Hills to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches, but he disliked them for their boorishness.

Hundreds of peasants, among them the Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began selling their cattle and moving in whole families toward the southeast.

As birds migrate to somewhere beyond the sea, so these men with their wives and children streamed to the southeast, to parts where none of them had ever been.

Many of them were punished, some sent to Siberia, many died of cold and hunger on the road, many returned of their own accord, and the movement died down of itself just as it had sprung up, without apparent reason.

His excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me orders to move all the people away and not leave them with the enemy, and there is an order from the Tsar about it too.

"'Told them,' I dare say!" said Alpatych.

I'll go to the police officer, and you tell them so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be got ready.

He had managed people for a long time and knew that the chief way to make them obey is to show no suspicion that they can possibly disobey.

Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General Rameau's, telling people not to leave their homes and that the French authorities would afford them proper protection.

"Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give you leave in my brother's name," said she.

Give them that corn if there is enough of it.

I give this order in my brother's name; and tell them that what is ours is theirs.

We do not grudge them anything.

"But I never told them to come," said Princess Mary.

I only told Dron to let them have the grain.

Only, for God's sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and don't go out to them.

I never ordered them to go away, said Princess Mary.

"But I never sent for them," declared the princess.

I only said that you were to give them the grain.

I'll go out to them, said Princess Mary, and in spite of the nurse's and Dunyasha's protests she went out into the porch; Dron, Dunyasha, the nurse, and Michael Ivanovich following her.

I will offer them monthly rations and housing at our Moscow estate.

So many different eyes, old and young, were fixed on her, and there were so many different faces, that she could not distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them all at once, did not know how to do it.

Let them ruin us!

For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of her room hearing the sound of the peasants' voices that reached her from the village, but it was not of them she was thinking.

She felt that she could not understand them however much she might think about them.

"I'll show them; I'll give it to them, the brigands!" said he to himself.

He said the peasants were obdurate and that at the present moment it would be imprudent to "overresist" them without an armed force, and would it not be better first to send for the military?

I'll give them armed force...

Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by name to come and bind Karp.

And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took off his own belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them.

"Aye, when I look at you!..." said one of them to Karp.

His kind, honest eyes, with the tears rising in them when she herself had begun to cry as she spoke of her loss, did not leave her memory.

Barclay was riding almost beside him, and a crowd of officers ran after and around them shouting, "Hurrah!"

No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear boy.

I'll look at them here, said he.

He despised them because of his old age and experience of life.

Let them cut the crops and burn wood to their hearts' content.

He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the dish for her.

Kamenski sent soldiers to Rustchuk, but I only employed these two things and took more fortresses than Kamenski and made them Turks eat horseflesh!

And above all," thought Prince Andrew, "one believes in him because he's Russian, despite the novel by Genlis and the French proverbs, and because his voice shook when he said: 'What they have brought us to!' and had a sob in it when he said he would 'make them eat horseflesh!'"

They are all dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a hayfork.

I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs'.

The second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at Vyazma, that Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as many of the inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were ready for them at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which could be had at a low price.

He took a pack of cards that lay on the table and began to lay them out for a game of patience.

"If this patience comes out," he said to himself after shuffling the cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, "if it comes out, it means... what does it mean?"

It certainly does them credit!

Almost all of them stared with naive, childlike curiosity at Pierre's white hat and green swallow-tail coat.

The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do not for a moment think of what awaits them, but pass by, winking at the wounded.

Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth along planks, while others stood about doing nothing.

One can see them with the naked eye...

There's our center, at Borodino, just there, and he pointed to the village in front of them with the white church.

From behind them came the sound of church singing.

Behind them soldiers and officers bore a large, dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover.

Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre recognized several acquaintances among these notables, but did not look at them--his whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who were all gazing eagerly at the icon.

Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his knees with his hand (he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the icon), came up to him smiling.

Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and Bennigsen and his suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the line.

Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon.

In the middle of the wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the tramp of the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the road in front of them for some time, arousing general attention and laughter, and only when several voices shouted at it did it dart to one side and disappear in the thicket.

I went to see them, but missed them.

The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew, apparently reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and have tea.

"Ask them," replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers.

Prince Andrew went out of the shed with them, giving final orders to the adjutant.

How does God above look at them and hear them? exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill, piercing voice.

On one of them he dwelt long and joyfully.

Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino Redoubt, Napoleon pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots where two batteries should be set up by the morrow to act against the Russian entrenchments, and the places where, in line with them, the field artillery should be placed.

In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouche; which were to come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and shower shells on the Russian fleches and redoubts.

Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the Russians, they would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because it was inevitable.

There was nothing left for them to do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go to fight, in order to get food and rest as conquerors in Moscow.

He tried to pass either in front of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers everywhere, all with the same preoccupied expression and busy with some unseen but evidently important task.

They all gazed with the same dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white hat, who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under his horse's hoofs.

"Why ride into the middle of the battalion?" one of them shouted at him.

If they've retired it's because there's work for them to do farther back.

The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire which Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly.

The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops shouting "Hurrah!" pursued them so far beyond the battery that it was difficult to call them back.

The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them was a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded.

The soldiers of Dessaix's division advancing against the fleches could only be seen till they had entered the hollow that lay between them and the fleches.

The smoke spread out before them, and at times it looked as if the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved.

The generals re-formed them, but their numbers constantly decreased.

Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier began talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.

Yes, tell them to bring me my horse.

"All the points of our position are in the enemy's hands and we cannot dislodge them for lack of troops, the men are running away and it is impossible to stop them," he reported.

At times, as if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed during which the cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but sometimes several men were torn from the regiment in a minute and the slain were continually being dragged away and the wounded carried off.

Order them not to crowd together.

"All right, immediately," he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.

"Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on," said the adjutant.

Let them have it!

The commander in chief listened to what was being said and sometimes asked them to repeat their remarks, but did not himself take part in the conversations or express any opinion.

There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them all.

In his broadsheets Rostopchin impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful.

It is impossible to suppose that Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had committed in conquered countries.

But I love them, you know, and don't want to distress either of them.

I would give my life for the happiness of them both.

"And who may you be?" one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: "If you want to eat we'll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest man."

"I ought to give them something!" he thought, and felt in his pocket.

"To be a soldier, just a soldier!" thought Pierre as he fell asleep, "to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them what they are.

Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of that day had evoked them.

Yes, one must harness them, must harness them! he repeated to himself with inward rapture, feeling that these words and they alone expressed what he wanted to say and solved the question that tormented him.

Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him, went on foot through the town.

That will help them to get well quicker.

Pierre did not understand and was not interested in any of these questions and only answered them in order to get rid of these people.

Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to see them, went to the back porch and out through the gate.

The thought that both her sons were at the war, had both gone from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or both of them might be killed like the three sons of one of her acquaintances, struck her that summer for the first time with cruel clearness.

In spite of Rostopchin's broadsheets, or because of them or independently of them, the strangest and most contradictory rumors were current in the town.

Even if we put them into the wing, the men's room, or the nurse's room, we must ask permission.

Will you let them come?

I knew you'd let them come! she said quickly all in one breath.

"I knew you'd give permission... so I'll tell them," and, having kissed her mother, Natasha got up and went to the door.

At dinner Petya having returned home told them the news he had heard.

The old count, suddenly setting to work, kept passing from the yard to the house and back again, shouting confused instructions to the hurrying people, and flurrying them still more.

She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.

Not only were huge sums offered for the horses and carts, but on the previous evening and early in the morning of the first of September, orderlies and servants sent by wounded officers came to the Rostovs' and wounded men dragged themselves there from the Rostovs' and from neighboring houses where they were accommodated, entreating the servants to try to get them a lift out of Moscow.

On seeing the count the major- domo made a significant and stern gesture to them both to go away.

Really now, in our own yard--we asked them in ourselves and there are officers among them....

You know, I think, my dear... let them be taken... where's the hurry?

It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an hour before it had not seemed strange to anyone that the wounded should be left behind and the goods carted away but that had seemed the only thing to do.

Many of the wounded asked them not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the top of the things.

"Let them have my wardrobe cart," said the countess.

She was putting away the things that had to be left behind and making a list of them as the countess wished, and she tried to get as much taken away with them as possible.

That old man noticed a face thrust out of the carriage window gazing at them, and respectfully touching Pierre's elbow said something to him and pointed to the carriage.

He sat down at the dusty writing table, and, having laid the manuscripts before him, opened them out, closed them, finally pushed them away, and resting his head on his hand sank into meditation.

At daybreak, however, those nearing the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of soldiers crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the opposite side and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless masses of troops were bearing down on them from behind, and an unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them.

In what light must I appear to them! thought he, thinking of his troops.

'Boyars,' I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire the peace and welfare of all my subjects.'

However, I know their presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly, impressively, and majestically.

Having learned that there were many charitable institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he would shower favors on them all.

Only a few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the enemy's hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are dead and fall as lightly as fish scales.

The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o'clock at night till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the wounded and the last of the inhabitants who were leaving.

While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the Stone bridges, a great many soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion, turned back from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently past the church of Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back up the hill to the Red Square where some instinct told them they could easily take things not belonging to them.

They unlocked their shops and locked them up again, and themselves carried goods away with the help of their assistants.

But the roll of the drums did not make the looting soldiers run in the direction of the drum as formerly, but made them, on the contrary, run farther away.

The general orders them all to be driven out at once, without fail.

"But how are you going to stop them?" replied another officer.

There is no getting them together.

"Come, go in there and drive them out!" shouted the senior officer.

"Eh, what twaddle!" said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man.

The officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but at that moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd on the Moskva bridge and the officer ran out into the square.

We too will take part..." the reader went on, and then paused ("Do you see," shouted the youth victoriously, "he's going to clear up the whole affair for you...."), "in destroying them, and will send these visitors to the devil.

They have horses, let them be off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the French.

Let them go away, that's all....

Release them, that's all about it!

Those standing in front, who had seen and heard what had taken place before them, all stood with wide-open eyes and mouths, straining with all their strength, and held back the crowd that was pushing behind them.

Like the seventh and last wave that shatters a ship, that last irresistible wave burst from the rear and reached the front ranks, carrying them off their feet and engulfing them all.

I could not let him go unpunished and so I have killed two birds with one stone: to appease the mob I gave them a victim and at the same time punished a miscreant.

Only at the end of it, in front of the almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in white and others like them walking singly across the field shouting and gesticulating.

I need not have said them, he thought.

In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.

To all of them from the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka, Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove sanguinary.

"Clear that away!" was all that was said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed later on that they might not stink.

Some of them were sabered and the Kremlin was purged of their presence.

Many of them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and quarreled and even fought with other companies for them.

Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its inhabitants abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and salt, nor bring them the keys of the city.

Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not lagging in any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate.

"Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger.

Shall I serve them up?

He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the kitchen for them to try.

I saw them close up their ranks six times in succession and march as if on parade.

This difficulty had arisen chiefly because the hussars did not understand what was said to them in French.

While listening to these love stories his own love for Natasha unexpectedly rose to his mind, and going over the pictures of that love in his imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe's tales.

At ten o'clock that evening the Rostov family and the wounded traveling with them were all distributed in the yards and huts of that large village.

Then he opened them and whispered softly: "And the tea?"

He kept asking them to get him the book and put it under him.

And of them all, I loved and hated none as I did her.

At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who were explaining something to some Russians who did not understand them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.

"What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring to Pierre.

Get along! said several voices, and one of the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take from them some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved threateningly toward him.

She screamed desperately and angrily and tried with her little hands to pull Pierre's hands away and to bite them with her slobbering mouth.

"Give her back to them, give her back!" he almost shouted, putting the child, who began screaming, on the ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the Armenian family.

When--free from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp--he saw villages with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen's country houses, fields where cattle were grazing, posthouses with stationmasters asleep in them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this for the first time.

What for a long while specially surprised and delighted him were the women, young and healthy, without a dozen officers making up to each of them; women, too, who were pleased and flattered that a passing officer should joke with them.

As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing around him a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the words "better late than never" and heard them repeated several times by others, people clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he felt at once that he had entered into his proper position in the province--that of a universal favorite: a very pleasant position, and intoxicatingly so after his long privations.

His particularly free manner of dancing even surprised them all.

With the naive conviction of young men in a merry mood that other men's wives were created for them, Rostov did not leave the lady's side and treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style, as if, without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and the lady would get on together.

"I rescued such a lot of them!" said Nicholas.

Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and playful in them, but to dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little frightening.

He recognized them by the handwriting and opened Sonya's first.

In this letter the countess also mentioned that Prince Andrew was among the wounded traveling with them; his state was very critical, but the doctor said there was now more hope.

She was glad to find escape from them in practical activity.

Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry, one of which was occupied by Prince Andrew.

In the next room sat the count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery.

If they noticed anything remarkable about Pierre, it was only his unabashed, meditative concentration and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke French, which struck them as surprisingly good.

Pierre felt sad at hearing them making fun of him.

That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably, among them) were to be tried for incendiarism.

He knew he was in these men's power, that only by force had they brought him there, that force alone gave them the right to demand answers to their questions, and that the sole object of that assembly was to inculpate him.

Evidently for them "the marshal" represented a very high and rather mysterious power.

Glancing indolently and indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered the officer in charge to have them decently dressed and tidied up before taking them to the marshal.

Not the men on the commission that had first examined him--not one of them wished to or, evidently, could have done it.

Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them separately or two at a time.

They could not believe it because they alone knew what their life meant to them, and so they neither understood nor believed that it could be taken from them.

"That will teach them to start fires," said one of the Frenchmen.

He looked at them without understanding who they were, why they were there, or what they wanted of him.

Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something about him interested them greatly.

But as soon as he closed them he saw before him the dreadful face of the factory lad-- especially dreadful because of its simplicity--and the faces of the murderers, even more dreadful because of their disquiet.

He liked to talk and he talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest events--sometimes just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of them--assumed in Karataev's a character of solemn fitness.

Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in contact with, particularly with man--not any particular man, but those with whom he happened to be.

Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of his favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of it.

She went to bed later and rose earlier than any of them, and no difficulties daunted her.

"Where is he?" she asked again, addressing them all.

His eyes gazed at them as they entered.

"Yes, to them it must seem sad!" he thought.

After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him and either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natasha of whom he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them quietly and shyly.

At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had told her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound which had brought them together again, but after that they never spoke of the future.

Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun.

He talked to them and discussed something trivial.

Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by empty witticisms.

They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and deeper, away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so and that it was right.

She closed them but did not kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of him--his body.

But it is hard to understand why military writers, and following them others, consider this flank march to be the profound conception of some one man who saved Russia and destroyed Napoleon.

What would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had attacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when he attacked them at Smolensk?

The war went on independently of them, as it had to go: that is, never in the way people devised, but flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses.

The officer was admitted and immediately saw all the chief generals of the army together, and among them Ermolov's big imposing figure.

Kutuzov looked at them searchingly, stopped his carriage, and inquired what regiment they belonged to.

Should we let them go on or not?

Will you have them fetched back?

"Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov with sudden determination, looking at his watch.

Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind and around them, they would have captured Murat and everything there.

None of them listened to orders.

You will recognize them by the white ribbon they will wear on the left arm.

Several churches of different denominations are open, and divine service is performed in them unhindered.

Any violence to them or to their property is promptly punished.

(2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices as seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a fair price he will be free to take his goods back to his village and no one may hinder him under any pretense.

But as food was too precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part enemies, Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to purchase food from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them.

Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they had stolen.

The sight of them reminded him of all he had experienced and learned during these weeks and this recollection was pleasant to him.

A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to them, which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into boots and shirts for them.

"I'll go and ask them again directly," said Pierre, rising and going to the door of the shed.

There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among them, and about three hundred men.

Behind them came more carts, soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers, ammunition carts, more soldiers, and now and then women.

During the hour Pierre watched them they all came flowing from the different streets with one and the same desire to get on quickly; they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse flew from side to side, and all the faces bore the same swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck Pierre that morning on the corporal's face when the drums were beating.

Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat the carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly wounded on the head by a sword.

It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on that had seized them at the start.

It seems to them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have foreseen everything.

But in any case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for them and grew more impatient the longer he waited.

For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final goal-- their native land--was too remote, and their immediate goal was Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously intensified in the mass, urged them on.

Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur.

Their very numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all their energies.

He could not tell them what we say now: Why fight, why block the road, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate wretches?

But drawing from his aged wisdom what they could understand, he told them of the golden bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him, flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the dying beast.

Through these forests Denisov and his party rode all day, sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to the very edge, but never losing sight of the moving French.

It was necessary to let the French reach Shamshevo quietly without alarming them and then, after joining Dolokhov who was to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman's hut in the forest less than a mile from Shamshevo, to surprise the French at dawn, falling like an avalanche on their heads from two sides, and rout and capture them all at one blow.

A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.

Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads.

Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode silently, following the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest.

On reaching a large oak tree that had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to them with his hand.

Pointing to the French troops, Denisov asked him what these and those of them were.

So I went for them with my ax, this way: 'What are you up to?' says I.

'Shout loud at them,' he says, 'and you'll take them all,' Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into Denisov's eyes.

Only wait till it gets dark and I'll fetch you any of them you want--three if you like.

Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to be dried, and at once began helping the officers to fix up the dinner table.

I bought them very cheap.

I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy.

I send them away and take a weceipt for them, shouted Denisov, suddenly flushing.

Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over?

For you'll admit that if we don't know for sure how many of them there are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are only two of us.

"He'll make them get a move on, those fellows!" said another, laughing.

None of them knew anything, and Petya thought the officers were beginning to look at him and Dolokhov with hostility and suspicion.

Dolokhov, as if he had not heard the question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe which he took from his pocket began asking the officer in how far the road before them was safe from Cossacks.

Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see whether or not the French were running after them, but not daring to.

Behind the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their horses beside them were discernible, and in the hollow the dying campfire gleamed red.

Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses munching their oats.

One of them fell in the mud under his horse's feet.

"We won't take them!" he called out to Denisov.

Raisins, fine ones... take them all! he recalled Petya's words.

The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them during the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot's enormous baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians.

They understood that the saddles and Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that cold and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally cold and hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case the order was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but revolting.

After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by the campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up, walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more terrible to look at than before.

However, he did not look at them now, but thought of other things.

Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps in threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers.

'And he went on to tell them all about it in due order.

Pierre heard them ask.

They both looked pale, and in the expression on their faces--one of them glanced timidly at Pierre-- there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of the young soldier at the execution.

Its whole surface consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved and changed places, sometimes several of them merging into one, sometimes one dividing into many.

And without linking up the events of the day or drawing a conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a vision of the country in summertime mingled with memories of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into water so that it closed over his head.

"The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of Russians surrounded Pierre.

The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered them clothes, another boots, and a third bread.

Pierre sobbed as he sat among them and could not utter a word.

The French, excited by all that had happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched them with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent.

But these orders and reports were only on paper, nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out, and though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who had done much evil for which they had now to pay.

In front of them all fled the Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes.

Who has not asked himself how it is that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered French, hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the historians relate) the aim of the Russians was to stop the French, to cut them off, and capture them all?

Can the French be so enormously superior to us that when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not beat them?

But the French troops quite rightly did not consider that this suited them, since death by hunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.

To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do their surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but the question of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals and in graves does not even interest them, for it does not come within the range of their investigation.

Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing cloud of death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the face.

To admit the possibility of a future seemed to them to insult his memory.

During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her chair and closed her eyes, but opened them again on hearing the bedstead creak.

Together they felt more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself when alone.

His actions--without the smallest deviation--were all directed to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his strength for conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the sufferings of our people and of our army.

All along the road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them) were crowding to warm themselves at campfires.

Most of them were disfigured by frost-bitten noses and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and festering eyes.

One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them, one of whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of raw flesh with their hands.

But after all who asked them here?

Two sergeants major were sitting with them and their campfire blazed brighter than others.

"It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out his feet toward the fire.

They say that when we've finished hammering them, we're to receive double kits!

Tell them to send me to hospital; I'm aching all over; anyway I shan't be able to keep up.

"What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is that not one of them had what you might call real boots on," said a soldier, starting a new theme.

They were clearing the hut for the colonel and carried them out.

It was pitiful to see them, boys, put in the dancer.

As they turned them over one seemed still alive and, would you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo.

"But they're a clean folk, lads," the first man went on; "he was white-- as white as birchbark--and some of them are such fine fellows, you might think they were nobles."

So,' he says, 'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as we drag them off: we can hardly do it.

And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them and, my word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw down their muskets and went on their knees.

"Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!" said one of the soldiers, "and what a lot of them there are!"

"They are men too," said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his coat.

The stars, as if knowing that no one was looking at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering something gladsome and mysterious to one another.

The French did not need to be informed of the fact that half the prisoners--with whom the Russians did not know what to do- -perished of cold and hunger despite their captors' desire to save them; they felt that it could not be otherwise.

But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness.

There were several prisoners from the French army in Orel, and the doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.

They abused the police and bribed them, made out estimates at ten times their value for government stores that had perished in the fire, and demanded relief.

Pierre felt particularly well disposed toward them all, but was now instinctively on his guard for fear of binding himself in any way.

They all three of them now experienced that feeling of awkwardness which usually follows after a serious and heartfelt talk.

The footmen drew back the chairs and pushed them up again.

It occurred to none of them that it was three o'clock and time to go to bed.

Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there, but Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house with her.

Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them.

But as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented itself he appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the nations of Europe, led them to the goal.

As always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should get paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given them as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors.

Making a great effort she did however go to call on them a few weeks after her arrival in Moscow.

At first he watched the serfs, trying to understand their aims and what they considered good and bad, and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in reality learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and their judgment of what was good and bad.

Only when he had understood the peasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform toward them the duties demanded of him.

He was hard alike on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to get them expelled from the commune.

He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs--the "drones" as he called them--and everyone said he spoiled them by his laxity.

He knew that his every decision would be approved by them all with very few exceptions.

His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring estates came to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the memory of his administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs.

"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal--there is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."

Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya and the old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to disagree, could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they had their moments of antagonism.

She sat down and played with them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable crossness worried her.

And he told her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till spring.

And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them tenaciously.

Pierre with the baby on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries.

"Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha.

The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return because no one else drew them into the social life of the household as he did.

The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and especially that Natasha would now be herself again.

Knowing that Natasha asked nothing for herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the house, and never forgot anything.

Denisov, not being a member of the family, did not understand Pierre's caution and being, as a malcontent, much interested in what was occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre to tell them about what had happened in the Semenovsk regiment, then about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible Society.

The men went into the study and little Nicholas Bolkonski followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the writing table in a shady corner by the window.

I told them just one thing in Petersburg.

She did not compare them with him, but compared her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and felt with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for young Nicholas.

Natasha was so used to this kind of talk with her husband that for her it was the surest sign of something being wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical reasoning.

You won't escape!--from that moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic and contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked about at one and the same time.

But I succeeded in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear and simple.

Suddenly the threads that moved them began to slacken and become entangled and it grew difficult to move.

And Uncle Nicholas stood before them in a stern and threatening attitude.

Having in theory rejected the view held by the ancients, it still follows them in practice.

And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him.

As soon as historians of different nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same event, the replies they give immediately lose all meaning, for this force is understood by them all not only differently but often in quite contradictory ways.

And in the same way the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events, and sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that power produces events.

The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that such and such people wrote such and such books?

If the animals leading the herd change, this happens because the collective will of all the animals is transferred from one leader to another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them in the direction selected by the whole herd.

Each of them expresses his opinion as to how and where to haul it.

Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life.

I don't want to spoil them - or anyone else to spoil them.

Then the boy picked up the reins, shook them, and said "Gid-dap!"

Why not let them live?

The words of the cold and moist vegetable Prince were not very comforting, and as he spoke them he turned away and left the enclosure.

Following these halls they discovered many small rooms opening from them, and some were furnished with glass benches, tables and chairs.

Some of the Mangaboos fell down and had to be dragged from the fire, and all were so withered that it would be necessary to plant them at once.

After you have written three or four words, you can put them together, can you not?

You may have them, if you will give me the whistle.

He drove these to the pastures on the hills and watched them day after day while they fed on the short green grass.

Some of them ran towards the east, some towards the west, and some towards the south.

They counted them and were surprised to find that not one lamb of the great flock of seven hundred was missing.

He tried first one plan and then another; but none of them proved anything at all.

Then he called his wisest men together and asked them, "Is it really true that the first people in the world were Egyptians?"

He gave these to a shepherd and ordered him to bring them up among his sheep, far from the homes of men.

There he cared for them with love and kindness; but no word did he speak in their hearing.

The king had sent them there to make the people obey his unjust laws.

Some of them camped in Charlestown, [Footnote: Charles'town.] a village near Boston.

Then he began to nail them on.

There is no reason any of them have to be.

They exist simply because we have not had the means to solve them in the past.

I make them because I believe I can back them up with convincing proofs and arguments.

But sometimes it is hard to tell them apart when we don't have an offline frame of reference.

Princip seized the opportunity and fired into the open car at a range of five feet, killing them both.

How many of them have filed for unemployment since they graduated?

We cannot fashion them from machinery.

But as we do them yet again and capture them, we finally can begin to develop a planet-wide memory system.

We know for certain that these feats, and hundreds more like them, are true.

Regarding the various syndromes: Over time we would expect to better understand their root causes, and consider them disorders to be cured to the extent the affected person wishes them to be.

(With more than thirty thousand genes in your body, you can't expect them all to have cool names.)

Many of them were so tame that they would eat from my hand and let me feel them.

Thinking that turn and turn about is fair play, she seized the scissors and cut off one of my curls, and would have cut them all off but for my mother's timely interference.

I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them--words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's rod, with flowers."

I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher.

I took my "Reader for Beginners" and hunted for the words I knew; when I found them my joy was like that of a game of hide-and-seek.

All my early lessons have in them the breath of the woods--the fine, resinous odour of pine needles, blended with the perfume of wild grapes.

It was great fun to plunge my hand into the bowl and feel the tadpoles frisk about, and to let them slip and slide between my fingers.

In the pleasure of doing this, I did not stop to look at my own gifts; but when I was ready for them, my impatience for the real Christmas to begin almost got beyond control.

I remember the surprise and the pain I felt as I noticed that they placed their hands over mine when I talked to them and that they read books with their fingers.

I idealized them as the bravest and most generous men that ever sought a home in a strange land.

For a long time, when I wrote a letter, even to my mother, I was seized with a sudden feeling of terror, and I would spell the sentences over and over, to make sure that I had not read them in a book.

I find in one of them, a letter to Mr. Anagnos, dated September 29, 1891, words and sentiments exactly like those of the book.

They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can.

It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them.

He wished to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.

Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did however smile.

They listened to the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of understanding but not wishing to appear to do so.

When you meet them in society it seems as if there were something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing!

Anatole brought two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was already quite light.

The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his arms wide and threw them round the little girl who had run in.

It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.

Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of inquiry.

"When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri.

The count took the gentlemen into his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes.

None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew it had appeared.

One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a most fashionable young man.

Many voices shouted and talked at the same time, so that Count Rostov had not time to signify his approval of them all, and the group increased, dispersed, re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the largest hall and to the big table.

At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our sole aim was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage if we meant to retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the country.

So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by the tenth I don't receive news that they have all got away I shall have to throw up everything and come myself to Bald Hills.

Several of them ran into Ferapontov's yard before Alpatych's eyes.

The count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.